Babycastles – Hardcore Feelings

By: Derek Yu

On: August 5th, 2010

Babycastles professes to be New York’s first independent games arcade, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of another one anywhere.

As a new function of a legendary all-ages venue for Brooklyn music and other local diy-culture, Babycastles is a wall of six lovingly decorated arcade cabinets that offers a physical place to play games made by amateur and independent game developers. The arcade is open four or five nights a week, during every show at the Silent Barn. The venue throws an opening party every few weeks for a new collection of arcade games, with the game developers present, music, drinks, and plenty of opportunity to get together and love games.

Tonight at 8m EST, Matthew “fort90” Hawkins is curating a selection of indie games, including Rescue the Beagles and two games from last year’s Game Over Continue show at Giant Robot San Francisco (I worked on Calvin and Hellen’s Bogus Journey). Also, because of the “specialized hardware” involved, Phil Fish will also be presenting Polytron’s Super Hypercube for this one night only. If you’re in the area, check it out for me!

Posted in Community | Tags: Babycastles

Effortless

with an appearance by phil fish
http://twitter.com/beemicksee Brandon McCartin

Your reading skills have come a long way.
Phubans

That's got to be one of the most obnoxiously unintelligible advertisements I've ever seen.
Phubans

Oh, I get it. You're supposed to view it with 3D glasses on. Still, it took my brain like 5 seconds to figure out what the hell I was looking at and if it was supposed to look like that or if it was just loading wrong.
Juhkystar

Am I a bad person for being most interested in the fact that Glomag is playing? =3
Geti

Oh man, I wish I could go to new york for free to go to this :P
I'd love to meet/see fish. Also I haven't been to an arcade since forever and even though I never really did, it'd still be nice to.
Damn.
http://iterationgames.com jph

Wow, there is a striking similarity to a project I am working on here in Toronto,. a six machine indie arcade called The Arcadian Renaissance;

http://handeyesociety.com/project/the-arcadian-…

We are underway collecting the parts to retrofit 5 more machines to go with our already deployed TORONTRON. Finding cabinets to retrofit has been slowing us down, but should have a couple to start on this very weekend. Wish us luck.
http://planar-studios.com Daiz

So we can play Katawa Shoujo, a visual novel… on an arcade cabinet?

I have no words for how amusing just the idea of this is.
Thegamedesigner

Another Indie arcade! With this in NY, and the TORONTRON machines touring around, the world will be exposed to TONS of indie goodness.

Also, GLOMAG! Awesome!
Guest

The idea is good, but why not have games that are actually geared towards arcade gameplay? I mean Katawa Shoujo, isn't that an eroge?

Even if they're going with the censored version of it, that's a fairly lengthy game and not suited to the pick up and play nature of a public arcade cabinet.

Why not have games like Hydorah, Noitu Love 2, or Streemerz? Those would all be perfect for an arcade conversion.
rinkuhero

i live in the area (well, a bus ride of an hour away) but i'm not sure what's so appealing about this — i mean, it's just normal indie games that we can play on computer, put in fake arcade cabinets so that people can play them that way? rather than new indie games made specifically for arcade machines? if so, why is this exciting? i don't understand.

as 'guest' says above, it'd have been more interesting to pick games which feel like arcade games, too. but i'd rather have it have new games, games that are only available to play if you visit the arcade, that would be a greater draw-factor than games you can already download for free.
PhasmaFelis

So, wait, I see Love Love 2 on there. Did someone make an indie game by that name, or are we talking about the 1999 PS1 Japan-only minecart-riding/sandwich-making/dating game?

'Cause that's…well, actually, it most likely was an indie effort in Japan, and also it would be insanely hilarious to play in an arcade cabinet, so I'm really not sure what I'm complaining about.
PhasmaFelis

BTW, Derek, could you add links to the featured games? It's kinda hard to search for “Untitled”.
JimmySH

With highscore tables it opens up for some competition, though like online highscores but with the arcade sense of fellowship.
FISH

hey paul, im glad you stayed home.
http://twitter.com/moshboy moshboy

I personally thought part of the idea was to introduce some indie games to a new audience.. and I'm not sure about some of the other choices but Rescue the Beagles would suit an arcade cabinet perfectly imo.
rinkuhero

i think that's a good goal, i'm just not sure why developers or people who already played those games should visit it if we can already play them on our computers for free. i mean, arcades went out of business for a reason (consoles and PCs gradually caught up in power to arcade machines until they were superior, and there was no real reason after that to go to arcades).
Mike Hunt

Is fish in NY really that good? I'll have to check out the seafood scene there myself.
somenerd

Pretty sure the draw is making games a social experience again.
Raigan

such a charmer! :)
Gainsworthy

Oooh, this poster looks gorgeous with some 3D glasses on. Subtle, but also coming out of my screen.

Sound(s? ed? – is this an ongoing thing?) like fun. Wish I lived a little closer. Half a world away does not easy transport make.
Toadsanime

Holy crap, that's awesome. I'd love to have something like that nearby me in the U.K, would be undeniably bitchin'.
babycastles

That's awesome jph. How long do you have that space for?
babycastles

The idea is to provide space where not only games can be played socially but to create a identity for NYC indie community. We had no idea when started this arcade that there were people who were involved in indie games in our very own neighborhood (Ridgwood, Queens).

As far as the selection goes, we have the gmes curated by someone different each month, and seek out newer games that haven't been released to the public yet (i.e. Nihogg). Also, the reasons why we want multiple arcades are:

– It's just more fun to hear the sound of the arcade resonating out of 5 machines instead of 1.

– Logistically speaking if you have almost 80 people at a party, one cabinet is certainly not enough to serve all of them.

– We have themes for each party, it's pretty hard to find 6 awesome titles around a certain theme, let alone hundreds of them.

We've also made it a point to have at least one developer from the games we're featuring come out and give a talk and take questions. As a developer myself, it's really exciting to see people play your game and get their feedback. Even though the last event was free and open to all, we're creating a model where we can actually PAY the developers for hosting their games here, if and when we start charging. Of course it doesn't have to cost money, and developers choose if they want to have a door fee or not. Since it's inception every Babycastles event has been free and open to all ages.

Come to Brooklyn/Queens and check us out sometime, we'll even let you rush our couch.

There is also a lot more to the space then just games in re-purposed windows xp machines. We're going to have game design workshops, a zine, and host of other cool things down the road.
babycastles

We have at least one, if not a couple of events each month!
babycastles

Hey – It's Kunal from Babycastles …….. Syed showed me this. —————- If you want some help, just write us at [email protected]. Awesome
rinkuhero

thanks for the answer, some of those are good points.

but, i didn't mean only have one arcade machine. by all means have as many as you can afford and have space for. but why not allow each one to play any freeware game, instead of just specific ones? or at least have one of the arcade machines out of the 6 be capable of that, and have the other 5 dedicated to specific games, as an experiment? it'd introduce people to many more games that way, and give people a taste of how varied indie games are, so if they don't like the 6 games there they always have more choices.

i may show up some time if i'm ever in the area for other reasons (my grandmother lives in queens for instance, so i go there very occasionally to visit her, although i haven't in some years) just cause it'd be good to meet other indie devs in the area, it's just that i don't have any particular desire to play indie games in arcade machines when i can already play them on computer, i get that there's an aesthetic / retro feeling involved in it for some, but i just don't share that feeling (perhaps because i'm old enough to remember how inferior arcades actually were to the convenience of playing at home: i used to waste tens of dollars a day in arcades in the 80s because those games weren't available in homes).
babycastles

Hey rinkuhero – thanks for responding! But come by the space sometime you're
in the area and feel free to have this conversation with us in person.
:) There is huge value in curating specific games and contextualizing them
beside each other, especially as a tangible way to engage an audience who
might not otherwise play games. Like an arcade from the past, one of the
primary parts of the experience here is the line / crowd that forms around a
specific game as an interest in playing next resonates – Kunal
Testicles McSamson

I disagree with the idea of a cabinet with tons of selections on it. Remember when you were a kid and had 1, maybe 2 new games a year for your (insert favorite console from childhood here [mine was NES])? How much you played that despite it's massive flaws. Then later, when the cosole was fading out, how you got a ton of games for next to nothing or even for free? But you barely played most of them? 150 games on an arcade cabinet is going to lead to overwhelming the player and zero screen time for all but the most popular titles. Plus, the point of these, I imagine, is to force people to experience certain games in an engaging way. It's all very NY hipster. I'd go if I still lived in NY. I bet you could find everyone from http://www.latfh.com there.
Mike Hunt

You have a very valid point. No other way I'd have beat Dragon Master.
Mike Hunt

I meant Dragon Fighter. Actually turned out to be a kickass game, just didn't come with the big cool hype back in the day…come to think of it I had similar experience with Dinowarz:Destruction of Spondylus.